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jpskewedthroneI'd like to welcome Daryl Gregory to my blog today, where he's talking about his latest book hitting the bookshelves this week! And it appears to be about zombies. Since I've been on a zombie kick lately (see my last two reviews), I should probably check this out. Here's what Daryl has to say about the book. Thanks for stopping by, Daryl, and I hope everyone here gives you a warm welcome!
A History of Zombie Violence
Raising Stony Mayhall is a story about a zombie boy who’s afraid of zombies. The hero, the eponymous Stony, grows up thinking he’s the last living dead boy in the world. Everything he’s heard about the undead scares him, and he’s worried that he’ll turn out to be one of those mindless brain eaters.
Eventually he finds out that he’s not alone, and the zombies he meets aren’t soulless killing machines, either. But the rest of the world is still trying to hunt them down, and so the living dead (or LDs as they call themselves) stay in hiding, waiting for the day they can go public--or for the day that one of them triggers the zombie apocalypse, which the LDs have started to call “The Big Bite.”
Stony’s a voracious reader, and one of the questions at the heart of the novel is why is it that people love zombie stories so much? More specifically, why do I love them so much? I’ve watched Romero’s Night of the Living Dead a dozen times, and seen most of the other zombie moves made since then. I spent a solid week playing Left 4 Dead 2, blowing holes in hoards of virtual zombies.
I think there’s a joy in guiltless violence. We play games and read stories stocked with implacable aliens, soulless serial killers, and black-hearted monsters--lots and lots of monsters. People love swinging a broadsword through wave after wave of orcs. It’s whack-a-mole with demons.
In the real world, it’s a lot easier to kill other human beings if we can convince ourselves that the victims aren’t human. They’re “targets”, “terrorists”, “assets”, “insurgents”--anything but people. And if the violence can be conducted in a far away country with little television coverage, then we don’t have to think about the victims at all.
This is the attractive illusion of complete moral clarity. One of the undead characters in my book is sure that the humans are looking forward to The Big Bite, because then the rules of society will be set aside. The fantasy of one man with a shot gun against a tide of evil is just too alluring. Screw paying taxes and returning that library book--it’s time to put holes in some ghouls.
But while some of the characters in Raising Stony Mayhall refuse to partake in the violence, the author has no such moral high ground. The book has more violence than my other two books combined. Characters are shot, stabbed, even set on fire. Millions more die off stage. I am guilty not only of literary assault and battery, but fictional genocide.
I will offer one thing in my defense (your honor). In the book I tried to show that each act of violence has a real effect on the characters and the world. Nothing can be shrugged off.
Still, there’s an awful lot of death in this book, and at every point I wondered if I was going over the line. I don’t know if other writers are worried by the damage they do to the imaginary citizens of their stories, or if readers are bothered. Please comment below and we can talk about it. As for me, I still feel a bit guilty.
Bio
Daryl Gregory lives in State College, PA, where he writes programming code in the morning, fiction in the afternoon, and comics at night. His first novel, Pandemonium, won the Crawford award for best first fantasy and was a finalist for the World Fantasy award. His second novel, The Devil’s Alphabet, was named one of the best books of 2009 by Publishers Weekly. His first collection of short fiction, Unpossible and Other Stories, will be published by Fairwood Press in October, 2011. He writes the comics Dracula: The Company of Monsters (with Kurt Busiek), and Planet of the Apes for BOOM! Studios.
Some places to order, in alphabetical order:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Borders
Flights of Fantasy Books (great indie bookstore)
Powell's Books
A History of Zombie Violence
Raising Stony Mayhall is a story about a zombie boy who’s afraid of zombies. The hero, the eponymous Stony, grows up thinking he’s the last living dead boy in the world. Everything he’s heard about the undead scares him, and he’s worried that he’ll turn out to be one of those mindless brain eaters.
Eventually he finds out that he’s not alone, and the zombies he meets aren’t soulless killing machines, either. But the rest of the world is still trying to hunt them down, and so the living dead (or LDs as they call themselves) stay in hiding, waiting for the day they can go public--or for the day that one of them triggers the zombie apocalypse, which the LDs have started to call “The Big Bite.”
Stony’s a voracious reader, and one of the questions at the heart of the novel is why is it that people love zombie stories so much? More specifically, why do I love them so much? I’ve watched Romero’s Night of the Living Dead a dozen times, and seen most of the other zombie moves made since then. I spent a solid week playing Left 4 Dead 2, blowing holes in hoards of virtual zombies.
I think there’s a joy in guiltless violence. We play games and read stories stocked with implacable aliens, soulless serial killers, and black-hearted monsters--lots and lots of monsters. People love swinging a broadsword through wave after wave of orcs. It’s whack-a-mole with demons.
In the real world, it’s a lot easier to kill other human beings if we can convince ourselves that the victims aren’t human. They’re “targets”, “terrorists”, “assets”, “insurgents”--anything but people. And if the violence can be conducted in a far away country with little television coverage, then we don’t have to think about the victims at all.
This is the attractive illusion of complete moral clarity. One of the undead characters in my book is sure that the humans are looking forward to The Big Bite, because then the rules of society will be set aside. The fantasy of one man with a shot gun against a tide of evil is just too alluring. Screw paying taxes and returning that library book--it’s time to put holes in some ghouls.
But while some of the characters in Raising Stony Mayhall refuse to partake in the violence, the author has no such moral high ground. The book has more violence than my other two books combined. Characters are shot, stabbed, even set on fire. Millions more die off stage. I am guilty not only of literary assault and battery, but fictional genocide.
I will offer one thing in my defense (your honor). In the book I tried to show that each act of violence has a real effect on the characters and the world. Nothing can be shrugged off.
Still, there’s an awful lot of death in this book, and at every point I wondered if I was going over the line. I don’t know if other writers are worried by the damage they do to the imaginary citizens of their stories, or if readers are bothered. Please comment below and we can talk about it. As for me, I still feel a bit guilty.
Bio
Daryl Gregory lives in State College, PA, where he writes programming code in the morning, fiction in the afternoon, and comics at night. His first novel, Pandemonium, won the Crawford award for best first fantasy and was a finalist for the World Fantasy award. His second novel, The Devil’s Alphabet, was named one of the best books of 2009 by Publishers Weekly. His first collection of short fiction, Unpossible and Other Stories, will be published by Fairwood Press in October, 2011. He writes the comics Dracula: The Company of Monsters (with Kurt Busiek), and Planet of the Apes for BOOM! Studios.
Some places to order, in alphabetical order:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Borders
Flights of Fantasy Books (great indie bookstore)
Powell's Books
